TOP officials responsible for a catalogue of failures at the Border Agency have received £3.25million in bonuses, it emerged yesterday.

The news that one in four of the senior civil
servants in the department – behind the Heathrow fiasco and the removal
of immigration checks – has received taxpayer-funded handouts sparked a
furious backlash.

A quarter of the top civil
servants at the troubled agency pocketed bonuses of up to £7,000 last
year despite a string of failures – and in defiance of senior MPs.
Details of the four- figure sums paid to some 16 bosses provoked
outrage.

Commons Home Affairs Committee chairman Keith Vaz said they had been handed out against a backdrop of border- control failures and must stop – as the MPs had demanded last year.

The Home Office’s top civil servant, permanent secretary Dame Helen Ghosh, insisted the scale and size of bonuses had reduced “substantially” over the last four years as a result of “restraint”.

We will continue to monitor the Home Office’s progress on this throughout the year

Keith Vaz

But Mr Vaz, a former Labour minister who published the figures, complained: “In January 2011, we recommended that no bonuses should be paid to senior staff. Despite this, the permanent secretary has revealed that some staff have been rewarded with bonuses of up to £7,000.

“The payment of bonuses in the midst of failures such as the relaxation of border controls, the inability to clear the asylum backlog and the reluctance to tackle bogus colleges through unannounced inspections must cease.

“We will continue to monitor the Home Office’s progress on this throughout the year.”

James Clappison, a Conservative MP on the cross-party committee, said: “I’m not convinced that these bonuses would have been awarded if they had been subjected to a vote of the shareholders – ie the public.”

Fellow Tory committee member Mark Reckless said: “It is disgraceful that civil servants should be paying themselves these bonuses when MPs as taxpayers’ representatives have said they are not justified.”

“Not only that but taxpayers have been topping up their salary during a period of recession and whilst necessary spending cuts were being made elsewhere in the public sector.

“Given the recent border chaos this looks like UKBA senior staff are being rewarded for failure.”

Last month research found that the agency had paid out more than £11million in performance-related bonuses in the last three years.

The UKBA has been plagued by blunders in recent years. They include last year’s scandal over checks that had been secretly relaxed. Managers insisted the easing on some low-risk passengers enabled them to focus on those deserving more attention.

The subsequent restoration of full controls was blamed for causing chaos over Easter at key airports, such as Heathrow, with some passengers queueing for up to two hours at passport control.

Last month the agency had to admit that nearly 4,000 foreign criminals who should have been deported from Britain after serving jail terms were still in the UK.